


The Nursemaid

by ozymegdias



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: Disabled Character, Francis Crozier doesn't recognize his own feelings, Injury Recovery, M/M, Major Character Injury, Original Character(s), Other, Somebody Lives/Not Everyone Dies, internalized ableism, survival AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-15
Updated: 2020-11-15
Packaged: 2021-03-09 19:06:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,021
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27571240
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ozymegdias/pseuds/ozymegdias
Summary: After retiring into obscurity in the Cornish seaside, Francis Crozier hires a young maidservant to help him keep house and invites the still-ailing James Fitzjames to join him in hopes of improving his health.He does not expect these decisions to collide in the most irritating way possible.
Relationships: Captain Francis Crozier/Commander James Fitzjames
Comments: 11
Kudos: 58
Collections: Fall Fitzier Exchange





	The Nursemaid

**Author's Note:**

  * For [katherine1753](https://archiveofourown.org/users/katherine1753/gifts).



Despite how heartily and regularly he thanked whatever god might still be listening (though he was less certain than ever before that there was one) for the ongoing presence of both James Fitzjames and Harriet Busby in his life, Francis Crozier had, as of late, become convinced that he had enjoyed this state of affairs much better before James and Harriet found their current rapport with one another.

Harriet was a local girl, probably all of twenty, plump and blonde and pretty enough that Francis knew that she could not stay on as the maid-of-all-work at his little house on the Cornish coast forever. Inevitably, some young gallant would come riding from the village out Manderley way with an armload of flowers and a question Harriet would answer very differently than Sophia Cracroft had, and Francis would be forced to put out another advertisement for another maid, and probably end up with one far less likely to keep his mind from wandering off toward the blank white shale fields always lurking at the edge of his thoughts. 

It would, of course, be another maid. Thomas Jopson had returned to his family a newly minted lieutenant, and would in due time probably be rewarded with a permanent position among the admiralty’s secretariat, so there was no taking him back to tend to Francis in his gloomy retirement, and the odds of taking on another young man to act as his steward was unthinkable. Francis was all too aware that the local village largely suspected he had hired Harriet for the sake of looking at her, but the truth was that there were scores of men Francis had failed, and only one woman, and it was easier to entirely respectfully enjoy the company of a young woman who did not bring any of his regrets to mind simply by existing. 

Harriet’s brother had been a sporting sort of lad until he drunkenly stepped too close to the fire one night at the pub, and his friends had been too slow in putting the flames out. He lived for another year, but according to Harriet, he was physically ruined by the experience, and she gave up her position at the haberdasher’s to care for him, undaunted by his destroyed face and croaking voice until the day he died. Compared to that, the idea of assisting Francis get up and down in the garden and with the housework was very easy- and when James came to stay with them, Harriet’s skills as a sort of nurse were convenient for them both.

But now, in the early hours of the morning- as had been the case for nearly six months now- Francis lay in bed, staring at the ceiling and listening morosely to the sounds coming from James’s room.

***

_William Coningham, MP, wais a man of such emaciated build and such lugubrious aspect that Francis Crozier suspected he would be unsettled by the man’s presence even if Francis’s own reason for being at the Coningham house in Brighton did not bring back the feeling of broad white blankness, of cold and dread, that reappeared behind Francis's eyelids every time he blinked._

_“I imagine he will be back within the hour,” Coningham said. “The children have been hell-bent for him ever since he returned to the household.”_

_In the dim light of the parlor, with the curtains half-drawn, Coningham appeared as sunken into his armchair as his own eyes were into his thin face, made thinner by the mass of wiry dark whiskers to either side. He looked like too many of Francis’s men, both the living and the dead, and judging by the portrait in the entry hall of the house, underwent his decline with similar speed._

Concern for James _, Francis thought darkly- and by that token, was Coningham’s delicate condition not also Francis’s burden to bear?_

_“Would you care for a drink?” Coningham asked._

_Francis abruptly crashed back to the present._

_“Er,” he said. “That depends, I suppose.”_

_“Jim did tell me you abstain,” said Coningham. “It is no trouble to call up a pot of chocolate instead, if you would prefer.”_

_“I- yes, of course,” said Francis, thinking back on James’s explanation of his foster-brother’s generosity on their ship home, after their long passage by land to safety with Ross’s party._

(James, lips cracked, hair shorn, one eye thick and dead in its socket, his left arm laying wasted across his chest, whispering of William Coningham's fraternal devotion, and what a fool he felt now for refusing it-)

_But before Coningham could even pick up the bell with which he would call up the nearest maid, there was a sound from down the hall of children's wheedling for cranberries and a woman's affectionate scolding, and of a man’s laughing rejoinder that to wait until after dinner would be torture for two so young, and that perhaps they could fit them in at tea-_

_Francis stood as Coningham's wife (rosy-cheeked, dark-haired, and perhaps a bit tired around the eyes) and children (a boy and a girl, similarly dark-haired and florid) bustled in without having had a chance to remove their coats or hats, followed by a flustered-looking footman, and then-_

_“Francis?”_

_The surprise on James’s face was visible even in the narrow stretch of it visible between the thin brim of his tall hat, the hair it forced beside his cheeks, the high collars of his shirt and overcoat, and the diagonal band of silk- of course he would forgo a patch when he could wear something so ornamental, Francis thought, with a deep, fond ache in his chest- covering his bad eye._

_“Captain Fitzjames,” said Francis, with a nod._

_James beamed. It was no longer the ghastly thing it was at their last parting some eighteen months earlier; his face now had a few new scars, like splashes of silver-pink, over his always-drawn cheeks, and the bright teeth that showed as his lips parted were now gold mixed in with the remaining white, but his complexion was no longer dull and waxen, and his remaining good eye was sparkling and lively._

_He closed the space between them without taking off his overcoat. Francis’s face was buried in its fur lapels, imbued as they are with the scents of tobacco and some kind of cologne he’d long forgotten hating years ago, and felt James’s crutch pressing against his own ribs._

_“You’re early,” James said._

_“I had an unexpected stroke of luck with the train,” Francis explained as they pull apart again. “Your brother was kind enough to receive me.”_

_“Jim has said so much about you that we feel as though we know you already,” said Coningham, rising from his chair with the assistance of first his own cane and then his wife, whose maid had already collected the children’s coats and hats and was haplessly waiting for Mrs. Coningham to give hers up as well._

_“Good things, I hope,” said Francis._

_“Dreadful things, obviously,” James retorted with a wink. “Fortunately for you, Will here is becoming quite infamous in his own right. You two ought to get along.”_

_Coningham’s daughter peeped anxiously from behind James’s legs._

_“Are you Uncle Jim’s friend?” she asked, with one fingertip bent into the corner of her mouth. Francis tried and failed not to think of a fish on a hook, which was hardly fair to such a pretty child, but this general crush of domesticity was so far out of his sphere that he faltered._

_James smiled down at her as the maid took his coat. His bad arm, Francis noticed, was in a sling against his chest._

_“Captain Crozier is more than a friend,” he explained. “He is why I was able to return to you at all.”_

_“That was more Ross, I’m afraid,” Francis said, hoping his face was not turning as blotched-red as he feared it was- not from flattered embarrassment, but shame._

_“I thought it was Mr. Charlewood who saved you,” Coningham’s daughter objected._

_“Your Uncle Jim’s social circle consists solely of those who have saved his skin.” Mrs. Coningham retorted dryly, with a pointed look at James._

_“Your mother makes a fair point,” James conceded. “But while I may not have set out to choose my friends for such qualities, they have proven themselves by them.”_

_The harried little maid came along and takes James’s hat, and Francis squinted, then gaped, and immediately smothered it by looking away._

_James’s hair, always the greatest vanity of a man with many, had receded at the temples and begun to thread itself gray, and the long waves he once let fall around his face, as close to flouting Navy regulations as he could get away with, had still not yet grown back. Without the hat’s help in pushing it down against his cheekbones, it looked wispy and unremarkable, despite the lingering curls that made it flick up from its parting and form over his forehead where his hairline put up its most stubborn resistance. With the band over his bad eye, the crutch under his right arm and his left in the sling, this final detail suddenly made him look every inch the crippled soldier he was- only a tin cup, a few rags and a tragic little sign around his neck away from being nearly the image of the men Francis passed, and gave alms to without feeling able to look at them any longer than he needed to, only that morning outside of the train station._

_“Elizabeth, this is Captain Francis Crozier. Francis,” said James, “this is my brother’s wife Elizabeth, and their children, Betsy and Billy.”_

_“A pleasure,” Francis said faintly._

_“Likewise,” said Mrs. Coningham, with a small nod._

_“Perhaps,” Coningham interrupted, “we might give the captains a little time to reacquaint?”_

_“I wanted to ask Captain Crozier about the time he sailed between two icebergs,” Betsy protested._

_“Oh, I’m sure you’ll hear all about it at dinner,” James assured her. “If I know anything about Francis, it’s that he’s a dreadful braggart. I daresay he told us that story so often we all grew sick of it, our first year up north.”_

_He had the audacity to follow this up with a wink. Francis felt he ought to be annoyed but could not quite conjure it up._

_There was a moment, as the Coninghams collected their chattering children and moved along, where James and Coningham exchanged the briefest of nods- so much so that if Francis were not watching James so closely he suspected he may not have seen it at all. It occured to him, as much as anything could in that moment, that it probably never struck anyone who knew James as a child as unusual that he would call Coningham’s parents “aunt” and “uncle”. Both James and his foster-brother were tall and dark and inclined toward gauntness (especially now in both cases), and there was a bittersweet symmetry in the ruin of their bodies before either of them had seen forty._

_But the moment passed, and Francis Crozier- always out of place even in his own family’s drawing-room, still tender from hurt received in others’- found himself alone in the Coninghams’ with James, the pair of them looking at one another from a few strides away, neither of them quite knowing what to say._

_“...it’s coming back nicely,” Francis said encouragingly, with a nod at James’s hair._

_“No, it’s not,” said James, with a wry smile. “It had nearly grown back a few months ago, actually, but it looked dreadful- I’m sure you can imagine- and- well. Off to the barber I went, fate sealed.”_

_He gestured at himself- ta-da!- with his good hand, but the movement was limited by his pinning the crutch against his ribs with his elbow._

_“I'm sorry,” Francis said, feeling very bland and unimaginative as he does so. His own hair had always been fine and blond and lank; it never occurred to him to regret his own thinning and graying when it was never a priority to begin with._

_“Ah, don’t be,” James sighed. “Probably just an early start on the inevitable, really.”_

_He maneuvered himself over toward the chaise, his left leg stiff and turned a little outward. James leaned heavily on the crutch with every left step forward and had to lower himself into the chase with delicate deliberation. His mouth was pressed into a thin line when he looked up at Francis again, but it relaxed into a tired smile._

_“You've grown stouter, old man,” he said, the smile broadening, and so gentle it was unmistakable for the jab it might have been a few years ago._

_Francis laughed softly and sat in the chair Coningham left vacant._

_“Don't sound so pleased about it. You always were a terrible gloater.”_

_“It suits you.”_

_“And even worse when it came to currying favor.”_

_“Low blow,” said James, with a laugh. “I mean it, though. You’re looking very well.”_

_“You as well,” Francis added earnestly. He meant it just as much._

***

Harriet’s voice was clearly audible through the plaster wall.

“Which cravat would you like this morning, sir?”

“The red,” said James. “With that waistcoat there.”  
  
Francis frowned and tried to ignore it. Before James joined the household, Harriet usually began her work before Francis rose and greeted him with a simple breakfast when he finally made it out to the sitting room. But James was an early riser, and Harriet was all too willing, in that stubborn, practical way of hers that defied any impropriety that she could be accused of, to help him dress and complete his toilette every morning now that he could not do it himself and his own steward, John Bridgens, had taken a well-deserved retirement on his naval pension and an additional stipend from the grateful William Coningham.

And in the next room, Francis could hear all of it, no matter how hard he tried not to. It put him in a terrible mood.

The worst had been the morning Harriet commented that James’s hair was growing out rather nicely, and James, with his newly minted weary realism about the loss of his once-famous good looks, retorted that it was not, in much the same way he had to Francis a few months earlier, though far less wryly.

“If you don’t like it, sir, I imagine I could hazard a trim for you,” said Harriet.

“I may let you,” said James, with a low, tired laugh. “You certainly can’t make it worse than it is already.”

Francis, annoyed in a way even he didn’t fully understand, dragged himself out of bed and pulled on his dressing-gown to go down to the kitchen and boil the water for his own bloody tea.

When James came down the stairs another forty minutes or so later, his hair was not much shorter than his now-usual abbreviated version of his former style, but it was certainly neater than before.

“Morning, Francis,” he said. “My apologies for leaving you in a lurch.”

“There’s nothing to apologize for,” Francis said, glad the whole ordeal of the morning was over.

“Harriet was helping me make the best of my hair,” James explained as he lowered himself into the chair. He grimaced partway down, as usual, and sat with his left leg extended. “Of course, that’s not much, but…”

He shrugged. Francis scowled and cut James a thick slice of brown bread.

“Stop,” said Francis, pushing the butter at him.

“Stop what?”

“Speaking of yourself that way. I’ve told you before, I won’t have it in my house.”

James rolled his eye as he cut and spread the butter as well as he could one-handed.

“There’s nothing wrong with a bit of realism, is there?”

“There’s realism, and then there’s going after yourself in a way I find it hard to believe you’d ever find in your heart to go after anyone else,” Francis said, with a note of prim finality. “Now stop it.”

“Yes, mother,” James sighed in annoyance.

“Where _is_ Harriet, anyway-”

“Probably cleaning up. Christ, Francis, you know her better than that.”

Francis stepped behind him to get another cup, casting a scolding look James couldn’t see anyway, and then stopped dead in his tracks.

Harriet had only tidied James’s hair, but this had apparently entailed neatly cropping the very nape of his neck, where it was not quite covered by the still-longer (if not so long or so thick as before) graying waves that comprised most of the rest of it. 

Francis stared at this for a long moment. There was something indecent about it, he thought, leaving just a little glimpse like that. Either let it cover his neck or cut it all off; none of this business that seemed practically designed to draw attention to the muscle there, or its general length.

Harriet came down a moment later with a brisk apology, and Francis wearily took his place at the table again, looking between his friend and his maid and wondering vaguely through the red haze of his irritation why he felt so resentful of them both.

***

_“Come home with me,” Francis blurted on the evening of his third and final day staying with James and the Coninghams._

_James looked up from the fire he had been staring into with an uneasy frown._

_“I beg your pardon?”_

_“Come home with me,” Francis repeated, coming closer. “I mean it, James. I’ve a spare room. The sea air will do you good.”_

_“This is Brighton, Francis. The whole bloody town’s sea air-“_

_“I’ve got a hired girl to help me run the house,” Francis continued. “You shan’t want for anything. James, I’ve seen how you are here, and while I can’t say I don’t admire your tenacity, you can’t be your brother’s nursemaid when you’re in this condition yourself.”_

_“Do you think I’m unaware of that?” James retorted, with a bitter smile. “The crippled leading the crippled, as it were.”_

_“Let me help you, then,” Francis said, and he lowered himself onto one of his aching knees before James._

_James looked at him for a long moment before looking away._

_“I imagine Miss Cracroft will object when she joins the household-“_

_“Miss Cracroft?” Francis rejoined. “You were the one who pointed out that she refused me twice_.”

_James frowned and looked back again._

_“You didn’t ask again?”_

_“How could I?” Francis asked. “James, I promised I would keep Sir John safe. I failed her in that. I failed_ you _in that.”_

_He looked up at James in the firelight, willing James to be calm, to know he was safe._

_“I never want to fail you again_. _”_

***

When Francis allowed Harriet a week off (fully paid) to visit with an old friend of hers visiting the village, James promptly shut himself up in his room and refused to join Francis in anything for days. 

Occasionally, Francis heard carefully timed visits to the blessedly modern lavatory at the end of the hall, and the food he left outside of James’s room was eaten and the dishes set back out again when Francis wasn’t looking, but within four days James had become a kind of taciturn ghost haunting the spare room, speaking to Francis only to assure him he was all right and only feeling a little unwell.

On the fifth day, Francis was sitting downstairs when he heard a crash from James’s room.

“James?”

There was a long silence, save the sound of James’s faint wheezing.

“James?” Francis repeated.

“‘M’all right, Francis,” James called down. “I just took a bit of a spill, that’s all-”

His voice choked off abruptly. Francis frowned and stretched his back as he stood.

“James,” he said finally. “I’m coming up.”

“You needn’t come in,” James called. “I’ll be all right.”

Francis frowned.

“Are you certain?”

“...no,” James admitted. 

Francis sighed and made his way up the stairs. The door to James’s room wasn’t locked- a good sign, all things considered, but he opened the door slowly to make sure he wasn’t barging in regardless.

The table by James’s bedside had fallen, and James himself was struggling to pull himself into a standing position from the floor beside it with his good arm. He was not yet dressed, and a bedsheet had wrapped itself over his body. His leg and back braces lay abandoned in a chair in the corner, out of reach.

“Easy now,” Francis urged him, coming closer to help him up. He extended his hand, but James turned his face away and kept trying to push himself up against the bed.

“I’m sure I’ll be fine in a moment-”

“James,” Francis said gently. “Let me help you.”

James slowly turned from his place on the floor to look back at Francis with an accusatory, stony sort of expression, and Francis involuntarily took a step backward.

James’s left eye was uncovered, and it was not merely blind- it was gone, the lids slack over a sliver of pink.

“James-”

“Please, don’t say anything,” James sighed. “Just help me up, will you?”

Francis swallowed and nodded as he stepped forward again. He reached under James’s bare arms, careful to avoid so much as brushing the edge of the twice-healed gunshot wound in James’s side and trying to avoid disturbing the sheet he had wrapped around himself, and gently hefted him up and onto the bed.

“Thank you,” said James, reaching across his own chest with his good arm to clutch his left shoulder, as though shielding himself from something. It was then that Francis noticed that the sheet was held onto James’s body without assistance by a pair of lace-edged straps over his shoulders.

It wasn’t a sheet. It was a shift; the kind a woman might wear under her corset, against her skin.

James was still looking away when Francis slowly ran a finger down the lace edging of the strap over his right shoulder, as though that gave him the confirmation he needed that he wasn’t seeing things.

James startled. 

“Francis-”

“I’m sorry,” Francis said automatically, withdrawing his hand.

“I can’t dress myself yet,” James said without looking back, though he was flushed in the face. “I can pull that over my head without assistance, that’s all.”

He moved away, a lurching motion propped up by one leg and one arm, and huddled at the top of the bed with his head bent forward and his lovely nape on full display to Francis’s view.

“...I understand,” said Francis. “James?”

“Yes?”

“Can’t you please at least look at me?”

“You already saw it,” said James.

“I would like to see it better.”

Francis paused and swallowed.

“I would like to see _you_ better.”

“Francis,” James groaned.

“Only by your leave,” Francis reassured him. “If you don’t want me to see, I’ll let you be.”

“Please,” says James.

Francis waited for him to say something else, but James remained still and silent. With a sigh and a fresh ache building in his chest, Francis reached out and gave James a bluff pat between the shoulderblades before he rose to leave.

***

That night, Francis was half-awakened by the sound of a soft rap at the door. 

“Yes?” he asked, a thin whisper in the dark.

“May I come in?”

Francis frowned.

“James?”

“I’ll go if you would prefer to sleep,” James said from somewhere in the hallway. 

“Is everything all right?” Francis asked.

There was another long pause.

“May I come in?” James asked again.

“Yes, of course,” said Francis, sitting up in bed. “I don’t know why you hesitated.”

Neither could he quite fathom why his own heart sped up as the door opened and he lit the candles at his own bedside to get a better look at James- or why that did not diminish when James came in at a lurch without his eyeband or his crutch, his bad arm swinging limply by his hip, with the big hand at the end of it atrophied and curled into itself. James staggered a few feet into the room and caught himself on a chair; he nearly fell and pulled himself up again with his right arm with a groan of exertion. Francis, suddenly very awake, climbed out of bed and offered him an arm toward the bed. James lowered himself onto it with some difficulty, his left foot pointing stiffly inward toward his right ankle as they hung off the side of the bed.

“Where is your crutch-”

“It fell on the floor,” James said, his voice rough from effort. “If I tried to get it, I would be too.”

“James,” Francis sighed.

“Don’t you James me,” James muttered. “You wanted to see, and here I am.”

He gestured over himself with his good arm, a grim echo of his similar gesture in his brother’s house, and then, as if to make a point, stuck two fingers in his mouth. A moment of wiggling them later, he produced a single-molded row of three gold teeth and set them on Francis’s bedside table with a thunk. His hand dropped heavily into his lap, and he sat there, hunched and avoiding Francis’s eyes, his long face caving in a little now at one side of his mouth.

Francis watched him for a moment, waiting to see if there were any other points James wanted to make, and then sat beside him in silence.

“There you are,” he said softly.

“What’s left of me-”  
“Which is all of you.”

James shook his head, but did not make any further argument.

“Harriet’s seen a man burned,” he said, after another long silence. “Her brother spent his final year looking as if Stanley had gotten back up and walked again.”

Francis swallowed. “I know.”

“So I know that to her, I’m a very unimpressive specimen when it comes to ugliness,” James admitted, with a bitter laugh. “I never wanted _you_ to see me like this.”

“After how you looked in that tent?” Francis asked, cocking his eyebrow even higher than usual. “With all respect, it’s difficult to imagine you looking worse than that.”

“Thank you,” James said dryly.

It was eerie, the way the slack muscles in his empty left eyelid still tightened every time he blinked or winced with the right.

“You know damned well what I mean-”

“I do,” James sighed. “Of course I do! Christ-”

“Did you think I would be repelled?” Francis asked, frowning.

“Of course I didn’t.”

“Then why-”

“Look at me, Francis. Look at me _properly_.”

Francis picked up the candlestick and held it to the side so it could illuminate every detail of James’s dear, beautiful, ruined face. James stared back at him defiantly with his single eye, as though defending his own right to call himself hideous.

Francis watched him like this for a long time, and then set the candles aside on the bedside table again. James nodded fiercely, with a sharp inhale.

Francis sighed and leaned forward and kissed him.

James startled and lurched back. Francis’s stomach dropped.

“I’m sorry-”

“Francis-”

“Please forgive me,” Francis sputtered. “I wasn’t thinking-”

“Clearly!”

Francis groaned and pressed the heels of his hands into his own temples, gritting his teeth.

“Fuck,” he muttered. “ _Fuck_ -”

“Francis-”

“I’m sorry,” Francis snapped. “It’s all right. Let me bring you back to your room-”

“Will you kiss me again first?” 

Francis felt ill.

“No,” he said, “I won’t. I’m sorry, I don’t know what I was thinking.”

“Of course,” James said bitterly. “You felt sorry for me, that’s all-”

Francis stopped short.

“What?”

“Just help me back there, please- Christ, when is Harriet coming back-”

“Do you know how difficult it’s been, knowing she’s dressed you every morning?” Francis blurted. “I can’t look at your collar without thinking of her hands closing it around your neck- I can’t look at that bloody crop she put in your hair without thinking of her fingers at your nape, how she’s seen the span of your back every time she helps you into a shirt-”

James leaned away from him.

“Do you- surely you don’t think Harriet and I are-”

“I don’t,” Francis admitted. “But that only makes it worse-”

But then James’s good hand was at Francis’s cheek, his fingers sifting back through Francis’s hair and his good eye glinting in the candlelight.

“Francis,” he said again. 

“Do you know how badly I’ve wanted to see you?” Francis whispered. “James, I already know everything you feel ashamed of in your heart. Why do you think I would mind anything physical?”

He took James’s left hand then, kissing it softly and lingering there. James winced and blinked heavily, one-eyed, a few times in a row.

“...Francis-”

“James,” Francis said, meeting his gaze. “Let me help you in the morning. Let me take care of you from now on-"

"Francis-"

"Let me be- oh, James. I'd be your _nursemaid_ if you let me. Please, let me take care of you."

James looked at him for a long moment in silence, and then leaned forward- slowly, deliberately- to Francis’s lips.

Francis had no protests of his own to make.

***

Kitty Sturridge had to return to her family sooner than expected, and Harriet Busby- wiping the occasional tear away and pulling the letter Kitty had signed “with all my love” out of her bodice just to look at it again- made her way to Captain Crozier’s house early the following morning. 

She was surprised to find Captain Fitzjames’s room empty- he normally would have been rising by now- and rapped gently on Captain Crozier’s door.

When there was no response, Harriet frowned and opened the door a crack, as gently as she could, to peer inside.

Captain Fitzjames lay sprawled over one side of the bed in a shift, his hair disheveled and his bad arm stretched over his face, hiding his missing eye even in sleep, and Captain Crozier lay stretched across the younger man’s chest, like a cat.

Harriet looked at them like that without saying a word, and then closed the door. 

Oh, well. She could always go downstairs and read Kitty’s letter a few more times before her day began.

**Author's Note:**

> I understand there are some real epics being posted in this exchange, and I hope my little meditation on bodily alienation and not recognizing when one's in love with someone else can at least stand up beside them. Unfortunately, I had to do some last-minute restructuring just because I wrote the first draft by hand, and then my actual typing and editing period was basically eaten up by an emergency apartment hunt! I'm satisfied with how it turned out, though, even if I didn't get to include nearly as much about Harriet and the elusive Kitty Sturridge as I hoped I would.
> 
> James's injuries and permanent disabilities are drawn as much as I could figure out from what happens to him in the show, though his bad leg is extrapolating from the time his real-life counterpart shattered it while "larking about" on the Euphrates Expedition and the assumption that scurvy made it un-heal itself in the Arctic. (I was really annoyed to discover while researching this that Barchester Towers wasn't written until 1857, or I would have had James make a joke about wanting to be carried everywhere like the similarly disabled, though not disfigured, Madeline Neroni.)
> 
> I hope, at the very least, that it's possible to imagine these two living happily ever after <3 I hope very much that you enjoyed it, Katherine! It was a pleasure writing for you.


End file.
